Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday September 07, 2011 @03:48PM
from the get-it-while-it's-hot dept.

alphadogg writes "Registrar ICM Registry announced that the .XXX sponsored top-level domain for the adult entertainment industry is open for registration. The domain was approved by the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in June last year, and then finalized in March. The domain is made possible thanks to ICANN's rules for 'sponsored' TLDs, through which domains have been created by interest groups. Other examples include dot-coop, for cooperative organizations, and dot-museum."

Not only that, but there's also another huge business issue. Adult websites gets insane amounts of traffic from search engines. It's almost given that Google and other search engines will put all.xxx domains under the safe search off -option, which many people either don't know how to put off or don't want to as it's categorized as "safe" instead of adult stuff. So if you put behind sites you're guaranteed to get filtered off safe search, while your competitors using.com and other general domains can do j

Why would that kill your income ? If content is legitimately "unsafe", it should be tagged as such. Hell I think porn sites would voluntarily self-declare as unsafe, because then if someone goes through the extra 2 clicks to turn off the safe filter, it's a golden invitation to open the floodgates and show them adult content, which they've now officially indicated they want.

I think.xxx is a good idea. I even think it should have its own dedicated search engine, google.xxx! Seriously, if someone says th

Most people don't know about safe search or that it's supposed to filter adult results. The thing is, it doesn't really work and people can find lots of adult content without going thru the trouble of changing the setting. This puts you in a really bad position, as your competitors will continue to be in the safe search results and you're voluntarily putting yourself out of there, missing 99% of searches.

Yes, but all the big, legitimate publishers already voluntarily shoehorn themselves into the "unsafe" results by declaring an ICRA rating, and all sorts of other wizardry to make it crystal clear to visiting individuals and search crawlers that they are an adult site. The only organisations that would choose not to shift to.xxx based on your reasoning would be the ones that are already dodgy.

I question that. Reputable porn sites usually want to help with filtering. Why shove your content down someone's throat if they aren't receptive to it in the first place ? Throwing off random porn results while I'm doing a screencast in front of a client is NOT going to get that site a sale. On the other hand, if someone explicitly indicates that they want porn, I say open the floodgates!

I mean mostly parents censoring their children, or some xian fundamentalists here who have a social pressure to procure internet from a provider who censors (although this kind of censoring is being made illegal in The Netherlands due to a change in law).

There is a difference between "people who want to see it", and "people who are willing to PAY to see it".

I wonder if the various for-pay porn sites, are really finding huge revenue from people who are looking at porn when they "shouldnt", and are committing the additional stupidity of PAYING for this time of illicit viewing, rather than doing it at a safer time and location.

Are people REALLY THAT stupid? is a significant chunk of porn revenue really coming from people viewing porn at work against company po

That likely goes for any website in existence, not just "pornographic" websites. Anything can potentially offend anyone at any time (and, indeed, mere text can offend someone). I don't think things need to be automatically filtered (or something similar) because of that. I think those people should just get over it and move on.

That likely goes for any website in existence, not just "pornographic" websites.

That's true. There are, however, few kinds of websites where simply displaying an image can be considered a crime under certain circumstances. Nazi paraphenalia images in Germany, I think, is one. Pornography to a minor is another.

Anything can potentially offend anyone at any time

Oh, forgive me. I didn't realize that displaying porn to a minor was just a case of offending the minor.

I don't think things need to be automatically filtered (or something similar) because of that.

I didn't imagine that you thought I was saying otherwise. I was responding to the "stuff down your throat, just leave the website" comment. It doesn't matter if you then leav

There are, however, few kinds of websites where simply displaying an image can be considered a crime under certain circumstances.

I don't necessarily agree with those laws. Furthermore, I really don't think filtering the website and hiding it from view would do anything. If it is truly illegal, then perhaps shutting it down would be a better course of action. And if they isn't possible, then that is too bad for them.

I didn't realize that displaying porn to a minor was just a case of offending the minor.

Right. They might not even be offended by it. I don't really care if a minor views pornography.

For that reason, I think anything that can help those who want to filter such material is good. If a simple block on.xxx allows that, I'm all for it.

I think the.xxx TLD is a stupid idea, but as long as it is 100% optional, I'm not too opposed to it.

Irrelevant. What you agree or disagree with isn't how the local prosecutor will determine what to prosecute.

Furthermore, I really don't think filtering the website and hiding it from view would do anything.

Ummm, it would prevent such things from appearing without direct action to view them. You would not be fooled by a goat.se link in/., for example, if goat.se is filtered from your browser. Any web content from a.xxx domain would be essentially non-existant if a browser filters out.xxx requests.

If it is truly illegal, then perhaps shutting it down would be a better course of action.

Please confirm, you are suggesting shutting down websites based on the legality of minors viewing the c

Irrelevant. What you agree or disagree with isn't how the local prosecutor will determine what to prosecute.

But I said nothing about that. The first post you replied to was just describing my viewpoint: if they don't like it, then they should leave, and then get over it.

Ummm, it would prevent such things from appearing without direct action to view them.

Please confirm, you are suggesting shutting down websites based on the legality of minors viewing the content?

No. I meant child pornography. I couldn't care less about the laws against minors viewing certain content (I don't think those should exist anyway, but that's not to say that I think banning the mere viewing of content should be illegal at all).

Do you also believe that liquor stores should be closed down because they might sell something to a minor?

Even if I did believe what you said above, this is a different matter. I could therefore believe that yo

what situations do you honestly expect them to be filtered by default? ISP's would know it would be suicide to do so to residential customers (well at least without assitance from the 2 other ISPs in the area to cut off simultaniously). There is no shortage of large well known adult sites that are not blocked under any normal situations (OK we do have to cut out tyranical dictatorships, and a handful of retarted governments like AUS). Face it if you are somewhere that can get to well known adult sites (youp

I don't think it would harm them at all. People that are trying to find porn aren't going to have any problem finding it. I doubt many people that do Google searches for non-porn terms but get some inadvertent porn links choose to bookmark those porn sites for later use. Likewise, if someone is searching for porn, and no.xxx sites are showing up in the results, that person is probably going to do a Google search for "Why aren't.xxx sites showing in my search results." Sand-boxing to a.xxx is a good thing

My point is that the sites in.xxx will get indexed just like everything else. It will show up in search results just like everything else. Like another poster mentioned,.xxx would be targeted by users looking for whatever porn criteria they are trying to find. If you are concerned that.xxx doesn't show up when someone is using safe search, what do you think the intent of safe search is? Do you honestly think Google will avoid indexing the.xxx TLD and miss out on all of that ad revenue?

But yes, the dating sites are usually populated by images of little known actresses pulled from porn sites and the like, claiming to be oh so interested in you but... hark! Thou dost not have a Gold Subscription in order to reply to the message! Oh, and Nigerians claiming to be hot women that would love to come to live with you but unfortunately they need $5000 to get through customs. Payable by Western Union plskthx.

Of course, the whole.xxx domain is a big silly waste of time. The prigs want to control and sanitize the net, and we all know that is never going to happen. The fun will be when people go register.xxx domain names that aren't in any way adult related. You know, 'FuffyBunniesandFuzzyDuckies.xxx', a site composed of nothing but cute pictures of fuzzy ducklings and baby bunnies.

To anyone actually peddling porn,.xxx should be a proud statement. "YES! We have porn here! Come and git it!"

I'm not saying it should be mandatory, but it's kind of like a red-light district. Self identification. That's a good thing. If that results in easy filtering, then so be it. I would much rather make it easy for my fellow sysadmin to block.xxx where it is clearly not appropriate, like office networks and kids' computers. Kids don't have credi

Well, the problem is that it makes it way too easy to filter for porn sites. Any reputable porn site is voluntarily listed by web filtering software, using something like.XXX goes way beyond that and makes it really easy to figure out if somebody has been looking at porn. Just type.xxx into the awesome bar and you'd get a concise list very quickly. And even without doing so, it's obvious just by the TLD that it's a porn site.

The adult industry won't be so stupid as to move to.xxx domains since there are fat too many prudes who would find this too easy to filter for others. My guess is that.xxx will be mostly registered by non-adult companies who want to prevent others from registering their name.xxx.

Nah, The adult sites will keep their.coms and get.xxx domains too. They may even change their "official" name to the.xxx domain, but still keep the.com. Best of both worlds. It will make them easier for people looking for a.xxx site to find, but still keep the advantages of a.com and avoid breaking bookmarks. It's not like it isn't trivial to have more one domain for a site.

No, it's all about 'tech porn'. You know, the sexy new gotta-have-it tech gadget that everyone it tweeting about.
You know you're lusting after it right now. Look at it, lying there so sultry. It's calling your name. "Hey baby, ever had a go with an iPhone 6? I'm much hotter than that iPad3 over there, I've got all it's moves in a slimmer, more compact body. Yeah baby, just shell out some cash and I'm all yours!."

Don't forget.NATO which was slipped in the root one day when a general called IANA ans asked for it. It was deprecated over the next decade and one day in 1996 or 7 Postel said "there's 7 tlds" "Uh, what about.NATO John? That's 8" (click click click") ok NOW there's 7 tlds, and he took it out of the root.

Things used to be a tad more loose than they are now. You don't want to know the story behind the Iraqi tld.

The hot tip is to put your nameservers under.ARPA simpy delegate a subdomain to yourself. They work justfine as A, MX or NS records.

The problem is no ICANN registrar I can find will accept a domain ending in.ARPA as a nameserver. This is a bug andshould be fixed. I've had no luck in 3 years getting this to happen. It would be nice if it did though.

Carve a reverse of the image you are looking to burn onto a piece of steel attached to a long rod. Put the carved piece of steel where it will get very hot (in a fire or on the stove preferred) put the hot steel on the CD and press. The image should be burned onto the CD.

The idea of a.kids domain is it would be "approved" for K-12 viewing.Cue the lawsuits when some atheist or islamic organization is forced off the 'whitelist'.Cue the lawsuits when some sex education organization is forced off the 'whitelist'.Cue the lawsuits when some political campaign site is forced off the 'whitelist'.

The whole idea that there exists one single objectively true "categorization" is about as stupid as thinking there exists one single objectively true "religion". And similarly the world i

What about all the adult, sexual oriented, material that might not be considered porn by most/some people?Sure there are tones of cut and dry cases, but there is also tons of erotic art, erotic literature, softcore, movies with a 18+ rating that some conservatives would call porn and they even would have a case for it, but that does not mean that it deserves to be forced into.xxx.

Outside of some vocal fringe groups I don't see any overarching push to label everything even mildly questionable as porn. By your rationale people would be clamoring to have much of the content of prime time television forced under an.xxx-like label.

I think it's rather obvious what would fall under the.xxx, whatever is currently considered xxx content; basically anything you might find perusing sites like Youporn. Everything else, novels, movies or whatever that wouldn't be considered hardcore porn would

What about sites that contain content that is undeniable porn, but also pander in a equal amount of completely non adult content.4chan for example has places for porn and places for stuff that is absolutely not porn.A lot of Anime sites include content made for children alongside of the most degraded hentai.

These are the current requirements [icmregistry.com] for getting a working.xxx domain in either Sunrise or Landrush. (No mention of open registration once landrush is over, but the requirements will probably be the same.

Sponsored Community Validation Process:

1. Person/company submits an application for a name in Sunrise A or Landrush with their registrar of choice — they pay their registrar directly for that.
2. ICM sends the person/company an introduction email that includes

I'm going to Godwin this and say that moving to an xxx domain is the same as getting branded, numbered, or badged. It's fine in the beginning, but wait until someone doesn't want you around. Same reason people have a problem with gun registration. Actually, same reason people have a problem with giving away any personal information that may categorize them -- and ALL personal information does.

The real reason for the.xxx TLD isn't to segregate porn sites. It's a money grab against other companies.Now Disney, McDonalds, Pepsi, and thousands of other companies have to register their domains with the.XXX to be sure that no one else registers their names.

The real reason for the.xxx TLD isn't to segregate porn sites. It's a money grab against other companies.Now Disney, McDonalds, Pepsi, and thousands of other companies have to register their domains with the.XXX to be sure that no one else registers their names.

This isn't clear to me. If you're Pepsi, why not just wait for someone else to pay for pepsi.xxx and then sue them for cybersquatting and take it from them and get it for free?

I just hope now that all adult content websites, will move over to the.xxx names, and leave all the other.com for real word companies....although I do not think girlswithbigbooty.com will be anything else other then Kim Kardashian at the beach...